CHAPTER XXVIII
FOUR-UP FOR HELP
Bound and helpless, Jerkline Jo Modock lay on the ground and listenedto the sounds of the battle raging around her. She knew that her herofrom Wild-cat Hill had come with his terrorizing panther scream, andshe heard curses and thudding clubs, then popping revolver shots.
She was struggling desperately to free herself of her bonds, but sheonly wearied herself and accomplished nothing. With her teeth shechewed at the cloth that covered her face, trying to draw it down belowher eyes, so that she could at least see; but her efforts here provedfutile, too. Then she began twisting her head from side to side andhunching her shoulders, which she found she could move, in an effort toloosen the knot at the back of her head, or to scrape the cloth away.
This last in time she accomplished, but it was long after all sounds ofthe conflict had ceased.
As the cloth came loose she moved it along by sticking out her tongueand working it from side to side, at the same time tossing her headabout. At last it slipped off, and, by raising her head, she gazedabout through the dark, wet trees.
She had heard the thud of horses' hoofs, but now not a horse was to beseen. Fifty feet from her, perhaps, lay the silent form of HiramHooker, flat on his back. No other human being save herself and Hiramseemed to be in all that dripping wilderness.
Time and again she called to the man to whom she had given her heart,but Hiram's lips remained motionless. A great fear clutched at her.Hiram was dead.
She fought down her terror, the horror of it all, and soughtdesperately for a way to release herself. She was bound round andround until she was so stiff that even to roll over and over on theground was impossible, as she could get no purchase whatever for herstrong, tough muscles. She began striving to bend her knees, and inthis, as the bonds gradually changed position and gave a little, shewas eventually successful. Once she had a start in this tiresomeprocess, she gained more and more, and finally she could move her legsfrom their straight position.
She rested then, and when she began squirming again found that she wasable to flop over on her side.
In this new position she looked about over the ground for something tohelp her, and close at hand she saw the dull gleam of steel.
As yet she had not the remotest idea of why she had been kidnaped; norhad she seen any of the persons who had perpetrated the act. Not aword had been spoken to her or in her presence before the fight. Shehad heard the man yelling about "the paper," though, toward the closeof the battle, but no other words throughout the entire ordeal.
The blade that showed its dull steel against the soggy brown pineneedles lay five feet beyond her reach. But now she could roll to it,and began to do so, flopping along like a fish in the bottom of a boat.She rested when her face was close to it, and began to study how shemight make use of it.
She might be able to take it in her teeth, but doubted if she couldreach that part of the rope about her shoulders, even then. If it wasa dagger, she could not think how she could utilize it, as it probablywould have no cutting edge. If it was a pocketknife, it doubtlesswould be dull, as pocketknives usually are, and therefore useless.With any pressure that she might be able to command, a keen cuttingedge would be necessary to free her from the coils of the lariat.
By now she had regained her strength, and once more began wriggling andworming until her eyes were close to the blade, half hidden by pineneedles. Then she realized with surprise and a thrill of hope that theobject was a razor.
How such a tool came to be dropped by her assailants was more than shecould fathom. She did not try. Working her face closer and closer tothe razor she took the end of the handle between her teeth, and,twisting her head from side to side, finally managed to close the bladewithout cutting herself by pressing it against the ground.
Then she rolled so that her face was directly over it, and took bothhandle and blade in her mouth, by the middle. Her brain had beenactive through these clumsy maneuvers; she had a plan.
Now for a tree from which suckers were growing close to the ground.The pines were hopeless in this respect, but off a way she saw thenaked branches of a black oak, and toward it she rolled, the closedrazor in her mouth.
It was a long, tiresome trip, and when she reached the tree there wasnot a sucker growing from it. She saw another black oak close at hand,and continued her flopping, seallike progress, toward it.
Here, to her unbounded delight, slender suckers grew up from an exposedroot. She released the razor and chewed upon one of them until she hadbrowsed it down to a leafless stub four inches high.
Then, working with her teeth and tongue and straining every muscle inher neck, she contrived, at the risk of slashing her face, to insertthe stump of the sucker between the two halves of the razor handle.
This pushed up the blade, and it remained in a half-closed positionlike a threatening guillotine. Knowing now that she would not be cut,she took the end of the handle in her teeth and pulled it down as faras it would go. Still the edge of the blade remained balanced againstthe top of the sucker. So she rolled about until she found a pinetwig, which she took in her mouth, rolling with it back to the razor.With one end of the twig in her mouth, she was able to push the bladeopen with the other end, and it fell back against the root of the oak,edge uppermost.
She rested again, and then crawled over the root until a coil of therope that bound her shoulders was pressing against the keen edge of therazor blade. Working her shoulders up and down, she saw the leatherstrands parting clean, and soon only one strand remained uncut. Sherolled from the razor and scraped this last strand against anotherexposed root of the oak until it parted.
Two minutes more, and she was sitting up, unwinding the rawhide lariatfrom her legs with hands that were free.
She struggled to her feet, and though she ached in every bone andmuscle, ran to Hiram and bent over him with a little cry of anguish onher lips.
His shirt front was stained crimson, and terror seized her. She foughtit off and, bending down, listened with an ear to his heart. Shebreathed a little tremulous prayer of thankfulness as she heard hisregular heartbeats, and then tore open his shirt to find that a bullethad entered his breast, high up on the right-hand side.
As best she could she stopped the bleeding and tried to revive Hiram.Into cold rain water, collected in a hollow of the ground, she plungedher handkerchief again and again, bathing the man's temples and chafinghis wrists.
At last he opened his eyes, stared oddly at her a little, then, seemingto remember everything, strove to rise.
Probably one woman in all that country could have completed thegigantic task of getting this big, wounded man back to the wagons, butJerkline Jo was fortunately that woman. With an arm of Hiram about herneck, and her arm about his waist, they staggered away through therain, Hiram conscious enough to direct the way, for the girl wascompletely lost. It was early in the morning that their journey hadbeen interrupted so ruthlessly, but it was afternoon before they cameagain to the road, and Hiram dropped exhausted in Jo's lead wagon.
Here she was able better to attend to his wound, and brandy, which shealways carried, revived him greatly.
There was no course open now but to loose all the horses but four,leave three of the wagons where they stood, and drive as fast as shecould with the four hitched to the head wagon, to get the wounded manto Artesian Ranch, about eighteen miles distant down on the Julia sideof the desert.
Never before or afterward in the lives of the actors in this outlanddrama were the mountains that divided the desert to know such a driveas that. Jerkline Jo had a set of four-up checks which she carried incase of emergency, and by one o'clock four of her big whites wereracing down the perilous grade, with Jo holding the four leather linesand operating the brake repeatedly, urging them to greater effortscontinually. The huge wagon careened about hairpin curves, skirtedprecipices, rumbled from canon to canon, while the girl, always sure ofherself, always sure of her horses, guided it skil
lfully and laughed atcatastrophies that yawned at her every foot of the way.
In the middle of the afternoon they raced out on the desert and took upthe long miles to the ranch. At dark they reached it, the horses badlyspent, unaccustomed as they were to moving faster than a walk. Therewas an automobile at the ranch, and Hiram was hurried on to the doctorat Julia, while Jo worked far into the night rubbing down her tremblingwhites, crooning to them, and giving them short drinks of water untilthey were resting their weary bodies in the litter, content and quietat last.